I sat down intending to write up the news but my “quick” review of Blade the Series got a little out of hand.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been watching a bit more television than I normally do, and I have come to the conclusion that, due to the unbelievable amount of television channels available to the average consumer, networks are desperate for a hit show that will bring good ratings. And I stress the word “desperate”. Over the last few weeks, Spike TV has been heavily promoting their latest creation, Blade the Series. I didn’t want to completely discount the series without watching it first, after all, Joss Whedon recreated Buffy the Vampire Slayer into something above and beyond the comedic-cheese movie that was originally released, and became a huge hit.

It’s a good thing I didn’t go into this with a lot of expectations. We begin the show with the obligatory credits, where it is revealed that our anti-hero is played by a stocky guy with the nickname “Sticky”. Well I’m sorry, Spike TV, but I can’t take any guy seriously whose nickname is “Sticky”. It isn’t very tough, and it brings to mind that someone’s been spending too much time with his one-eyed trouser snake.

The show begins and we find ourselves in, what appears to be, the basement of a building, with pipes and a main corridor, and narrow corridors leading off of the main one. No surprise that this opening scene is a vampire on the run for his life from “Sticky” on a motorcycle. In a basement. Of a building. With a motorcycle in it. (Hi. Overkill much?) The first thing that springs to mind is, “Why?” Somehow our dumb vampire never thinks to duck into a corridor where the motorcycle can’t fit, but that’s ok because they lost me at “Sticky”.

Suddenly, Sticky is off of his motorcycle – which is weird because I don’t remember seeing him park it. Maybe it’s a magical motorcycle. But he’s off and a fighting scene commences. Let me explain the fighting scene to you quickly. Sticky and the dumb vampire are standing a few feet from each other in said basement, where the motorcycle is now nowhere to be found, when Sticky breaks out in his awesome fighting moves that must have been choreographed by N-Sync. The camera angles were actually moved at the last possible second so that you could see three inches of space in between fists and faces. Suffice to say that Power Rangers fight scenes are more realistic, and that’s not saying a whole lot.
After the vampire is not beaten up in the slightest, Sticky stops to chat in his gruff-Wesley Snipes-wannabe voice. What he says to the vampire is so important that they didn’t want the audience to hear it, because Sticky’s wannabe low, gruff voice was not picked up well by the high-tech warehouse basement microphones. However, after seeing Sticky in action, I realized the formula the show’s producers must have come up with to find the perfect Blade:

Not convincing.

Blade is after the bad guys, and we get it. He’s also rough and tough and is an amazing fight-dancer. In fact, I bet he could compete against Justin Timberlake in a dance-off.

Then, a chick is introduced. She’s obviously tough with a past riddled with troubles and pain and anguish – and we get it immediately. There is a scene in which she comes home to her family and immediately they try to bring up a painful past, but of course she doesn’t want to talk about it because there is no crying in baseball. Or vampires. The scene at home with her family is short-lived, which was good because it’s horrible to sit through.

At this point, about 25 minutes had elapsed and I couldn’t watch any more and turned it off. I’m sure it’s safe to say that Sticky and Tough-Girl teamed up to fight the bad vampires and won, but will be back for more toughness and dancing with swords in the following weeks.

Thanks to a strong Blade fan base, Spike TV reached the highest ratings in the network’s history with the Blade pilot. However, unless they can do something fantastic to save such a hideously awful show, I don’t see many fans returning – like somehow getting someone’s shirt off. Let’s hope it’s not Sticky’s.